Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) hit the skids today when many people were trying to download the free test version of the Windows 7 beta operating system today. The software went live at 12PM Pacific Time. The software will be available until the last day of January. Microsoft doesn’t plan on changing or adding features, but still would like to hear feedback about the operating system.
“We got ourselves in a little trouble with Windows Vista; it became a bag of mixed things and didn’t really figure out what it was about,” stated Mike Ybarra, general manager of Windows Products. “There was a lot of feature creep. You had people saying ‘Let’s change this and that.’ Windows 7 has been very disciplined.”
Windows 7 has a heavy focus on boot-up time cutting, extended battery life, streamlined tasks, and the enhancement of smart device interaction. The fact that Microsoft couldn’t handle all that traffic indicates that people are looking forward to the new operating system. Vista already has a bad rep so it is important for Windows 7 to exceed expectations. Otherwise Apple will continue the trend of growing twice as fast as the PC market.
A Continental Boeing 737-800 test flight using partial algae fuel has gone successfully well. One of the engines in the plane used 50% aircraft fuel and 50% biofuel. The test flight lasted 90 minutes. The test flight took place this past Wednesday. This is the first in a series of tests that will be taking place within the aviation industry. Biofuels may become somewhat of a standard within five years. The test flight started from Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, TX and did a circuit over the Gulf of Mexico. The test took place from 38,000 ft. and included a mid-flight engine shutdown.
“The airplane performed perfectly,” stated test pilot Rich Jankowski. “There were no problems. It was textbook.” The alternative fuel was created using algae and jatropha. This past February, a Virgin 747 was able to fly from London to Amsterdam using fuel made of Brazilian nuts and coconuts.
The United States uses 20.8 million and the world as a whole uses 80.29 million barrels of oil per day based on 2005 estimates. India and China combined use about 9 million barrels and their combined population is eight times as much as the United States. The United States definetely needs to find oil alternatives so this is a good start. Our dependence on oil is costing lives of people overseas. We need oil alternatives for the sake of humanity.
Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), the search engine company that almost got bought out by Microsoft, has been searching for a new CEO since Jerry Yang stepped down in November. There were talks about hiring former Vodafone Group PLC CEO Arun Sarin, but he chose to withdraw. The candidate that is rumored to be stepping up is former Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) CEO Carol Bartz. Although it is not confirmed, she is “on the list” according to a WSJ source.
The board still has to put an offer together, but it is believed that it will be given out next week. Yahoo! wants to choose a new leader before their fourth quarter earnings announcement. If Bartz does become the new CEO, then it shows that Yahoo! prefers to have someone with consumer products experience of Internet advertising. Bartz is currently the exec. chairman of Autodesk and a board member of Cisco Systems Inc. Jerry Yang is also on the Cisco board.
Earlier this week at CES, Yahoo! announced that they have signed deal with Samsung, LG, and Sony for converging the Internet with TV. TVs manufactured with these partners will have the option to run widgets on the side. The widgets will be able to play YouTube clips, send out Twitter tweets, network on MySpace, and view images on Flickr.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has announced the availability of the Web-based AWS Management Console. In the first release of the Console, Amazon has made a point-and-click interface for their Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) service. Since Amazon did not have an intuitive way of managing EC2, a number of independent developers created ways to do so. An example is Elascticfox, a plugin for Mozilla Firefox.
The console allows you to log in to your account using your username and password. It no longer requires certificates or secret keys. The point-and-click interface is driven by AJAX. And on top of that the Amazon web community created Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). So far about 1200 AMIs have been created.
“That’s quite a menu to choose from—especially if you are a first-time user. The new Launch Instance Wizard walks you through starting your first instance; offering a short list of Linux and Windows server choices,” wrote Mike Culver, Web Services Evangelist of Amazon.com. “Choose one of these AMIs, and then the wizard even suggests which ports to open in the firewall. It’s smart enough to suggest that you open SSH (port 22) for Linux images, and RDP (port 3389) for Windows instances. The wizard even suggests settings that restrict Amazon EC2 access to ‘your computer only’.”
Other features include Instance Management, Security Group Management, Elastic IP Management, Elastic Block Store, and Key Pair management.
WallStrip is one of the cheesiest video programs on the Internet right now. In October 2008, one of the last clips that WallStrip made a “Happy 2 Year” video. When blowing the candle on the cake, one of the hosts wished for another successful season of WallStrip. It turns out that this wasn’t going to happen.
“A source familiar with the situation says that Wallstrip owner CBS Interactive plans to “take the DNA from WallStrip and apply it” to fellow CBS property BNet. No word on if that DNA includes current WallStrip host Julie Alexandria, or past host Lindsay Campbell (whose subsequent CBS show MobLogic also hasn’t published since Dec. 12),” according to Portfolio.
CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS) acquired WallStrip for about $5 million in May 2007. Angel investors in WallStrip include Fred Wilson and Howard Lindzon. The last episode of WallStrip was called Auto Bailout and was launched on December 12.
Evernote is a web startup that enables users to take clippings of photos, text, and images and make them into notes. So if you see something you like on the web, iPhone, or Windows Mobile device you can store it on Evernote. The company closed $4.5 million in funding from Russian investment company Troika Dialog on December 31.
Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote stated that “The rumors that circulated in the beginning of December were very premature—we still had unresolved issues and the closing was far from guaranteed [TechCrunch].” Evernote has had about 630,000 registrations since last year. Evernote wants to close 2009 with 2 million users.
When storing notes on Evernote, they can be accessible anywhere despite the platform. So if you own a Mac and a Windows Mobile phone, you can store the exact same files when you login. Let’s say you edit a PowerPoint file on the Mac and click save, it gets synched back to Evernote and the updated document can be downloaded again from Windows Mobile. The doc sync is what costs money, but everything else is free. The doc sync feature costs $5/month.
Over the past week, an 18 year old hacker got into Twitter’s internal administrative area. After penetrating the system, he wrote funny Twitter messages (“tweets”) at the expense of FOX News, Britney Spears, Barack Obama, etc. The way he was able to get into Twitter’s admin area was by using an automated password guesser. Twitter’s admin login on their server allowed rapid log-in attempts. Eventually the password that worked was “happiness.”
“I feel it’s another case of administrators not putting forth effort toward one of the most obvious and overused security flaws,” wrote the hacker in an IM interview with Wired. “I’m sure they find it difficult to admit it.” The 18 year old lives on the East Coast and goes by the alias of GMZ. Other hackers helped him with the attack. The hacker used a dictionary password attack against a popular Twitter user named Crystal who has over 7,000 followers. It turned out that Crystal was a Twitter staff member and he had the ability to access any other Twitter account by reseting them within the admin area.
After getting within the admin area, the hacker wrote a post on Digital Gangster, a forum for hackers offering access to anyone’s Twitter account by request. Below is a video that he created to prove to other hackers that he was able to break into Twitter. Hackers wanted access to the profiles of Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Rick Sanchez, Kevin Rose, and FOX News.
“We’re waiting to hear back from our lawyer about what our responsibilities are about this and how to approach it,” stated Twitter founder Biz Stone in a phone interview with Wired. Law enforcements have not been contacted as of yet.
GMZ also used a dictionary attack to break into the Miley Cyrus YouTube channel. GMZ’s friend used the hack to make people believe that Cyrus was killed in a car accident. GMZ also mentioned that the dictionary attack was used to break into the SayNow accounts of Selena Gomez and several other celebrities.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has had an interesting 2008 dealing with each other. Microsoft made an offer to buy out Yahoo! for over $40 billion, but eventually retracted the deal. Since then Yahoo! has had a hard time recovering from the losses in their stock price and their has been some major employee poaching going on between both companies. The latest is Microsoft’s hiring of Kim James Woo from Yahoo!
Today it was announced that Microsoft hired Woo to run their operations in South Korea. Previously Woo was the Regional Vice President of Yahoo! and was the head of Yahoo! Korea and Overture Korea. He will become manager of Microsoft Korea starting February 1. Woo will be taking the place of Jae Sung Yoo. Yoo will be moving to another position within Microsoft.
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